Definitely "The Big Space Fuck" by Kurt Vonnegut. I had to be all of 12 years old when I read it. Already obsessed with space ships and monsters, I found a copy of Again, Dangerous Vision at my library, sat in a corner and read it three times, feeling like I was getting away with something each time.

@ Vespers: I live in the most backwards part of a relatively well-off state (Maryland) that sufficiently straddles both the North and South. I hear the N-word every day and I know people who've never been farther than an 90 minute drive away.

For me, it never felt like there was a choice. Bluntly, I felt 'drafted' into being what I was. I won't bore you all with the combination of religious studies and magical practices and research that got me to feeling that though the choice of being weird/odd/magical was not really mine, I had finally shaped myself into who I am and want to be. I'm content with this end result.But others do find my a bit weird...

I can't pin-point anything. I know that finding Philip K Dick when I was 14 or 15 certainly helped get me to where I am now, but it was really a delayed reaction. His writing didn't make me start asking any really big (and weird) questions until 5 years later when I'd already been out of the church for a couple of years.

I don't know, I think I had such a boringly normal upbringing that I rebelled against it by becoming slightly strange.It's weird when there's something that helps you realise how strange you are. For example, I just can NOT listen to commercial radio. For one thing the music is terrible, but the radio ads just make me want to kill. It's odd when there's been a massive hit on the radio, and by the time everyone else has gotten sick of hearing it, I still haven't even heard it.

@ Cat VincentBut as you just said, you had to shape yourself. So that there's an element of choice. You may not feel like you had a choice in how you ended up, but it didn't just happen. You worked for it. Yes?

my parents, the older I get (i'm 21 now) the more slightly screwed up but functional they are.generally I'd say, like so many others, reading a lot when I was a kid and forever being more interested in books, reading, ideas, and imagination than almost anything right in front of my face.

It seems like most of the people here got a hold of a book or something that knocked your idea of what was possible up a notch. I'm close to getting the right image, that's not quite it. It's like hopping over onto a different track, taking the 'road less traveled' to paraphrase Frost.

The distinction between weird and interesting is a very important one. I think Interesting people tend to be thoughtful and communicative in addition to spending their time with things most people don't pay attention to. There are days when I just want to walk up to people who have a dull look in their eyes, grab them and shake them and say "DAMN IT, CAN'T YOU SEE ALL OF THIS?! There's so much going on just when you walk down the street to buy some milk that no one even thinks about that if they stopped for just a moment and noticed how leaves skittered across the dry pavement on a fall day or how people try so hard to communicate and just end up skimming the top layer of knowning what the other's thinking or talking about. This is sort of off topic now, but it's so hard to look at people and know that you can't know much of what they're thinking unless you spend most of your time with them. I'm sure you know what I'm getting at, since we're all a little weird here.

I think imagination plays a huge role.Like how somone was talking about how they had to play with all their old toys equally lest one gets jealuos? I totally know what you mean!Or I still, to this day, end up playing the "don't step on a crack" game, or like "I can only step on each square once" sorta stuff. Sometimes I end up looking goofy, but I've gotten pretty good at making it look natural.

I can say with perfect certainty that TV made me weird. My father died very suddenly when I was a baby, and he had been the sole provider. My family had to struggle during my childhood, so the TV was my primary caregiver. My earliest memory is actually a nightmare about Sesame Street I had when I was 2 or 3.

But really, where the weirdness really comes in, is when I think back to the young times, formative moments, I remember very clearly that we had a tiny TV that only received a few channels. And on one of those channels, there were syndicated shows in the morning. And my schedule worked out so that I was able to watch THE MUPPET SHOW, immediately followed by MORK & MINDY.

And I thought that those were normal TV shows. I thought the adult world was comprised of news and soap operas, but that the rest of the world was Muppets and cocaine-addled Robin Williams (I naturally didn't know about the coke until later).

Raised by Carter/Reagan-era US media. It's a wonder I'm not locked up somewhere.

Growing up with a weight problem, very few friends and nothing but the internet to interact with at home for eighteen years. Having my family blow apart and scatter to the four corners of north america after my mother coming out, then deciding that it was a good idea to spend my summers in the middle of buttfuck nowhere Alberta*no, not Grande Prairie, but damned close* planting trees with freaks. Also, helicopters introducing me to the idea that adrenaline can be FUN!

Always being the new kid. I went to Eight high schools in four years and went to a few of them twice. All the moves led to me being the quiet weird kid. It didn't help that my brother and I used to bring things like grappling hooks to school and scale school buildings and signs.